Hi.

I hope you don't mind my query: I'm asking for your take on a situation that arose before my divorce. I have read through the entire website and I love the concept.

None of what Dr Harley suggests is new to me in essence, but the "rules" and the language are VERY new! If you would be kind enough interpret a failed negotiation between me and my ex - according to the MB "rules" - you will help me quickly learn how to integrate them with my current style of thinking. Am I making sense? Hope so! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

OK. Our first year of marriage was stormy. In as much as we had a POJA (we had the idea, but not the language), it revolved mainly around his extreme privacy and a shared desire to increase openness & intimacy between us.

Although I believed he wholeheartedly wanted an emotionally intimate marriage, I got pretty fed up with constantly having to ask for the behaviours I wanted. Soon enough he got fed up with my asking, too. So I was trying to stick to our POJA and to express my ENs, but somehow getting it wrong.

We both worked in an industry where working late and late-night socialising are the norm. I wanted some time together in the evenings at home (rather than at a party). He saw my point, but nothing much seemed to change.

Except ... For a few months there, I would get home mid-evening to find him already in, watching the soaps on TV. We didn't converse or anything much; I did remark on his new-found love of family TV and he told me he was too tired to go out; wanted to catch up with the soaps to ease conversation with the girls at work.

You guessed it: When we did split, he confided that he'd spent those months in our living room because I had asked him to spend more time at home with me <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />
It broke my heart!

OK, he had listened and was trying to put credit in the love bank. But I hadn't realised <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Now, how would you describe this little story in MB terms? And how do you think we could have made the episode into the successful outcome we both wanted?

I hope some of you will help me out here, and am looking forward to your replies -
Thank you <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

EW

englishwoman,

Well, he wasn't being open and honest about why he was home more often, and you probably should have taken more advantage of the opportunity to be with him no matter what the reason he was there.

Are these questions for your next potential relationship or is there some hope of reuniting with your ex?

EW,

Very common in marriage...to focus on what you lack instead of what you have in abundance.

Your half was that you didn't see where he met all your other ENs...which is your responsibility, IMO, not his. I'm not bashing you...when we do the EN questionnaires, what doesn't make the top ten is usually what is being filled well, so we miss it.

Until it's gone.

Your XH had a problem with intimacy. He was brave enough to make new choices...not brave enough to say, "See? This is what I want to do to be with you." Up to us to see the big picture...not zero in on our lack...for then, we live in it...becomes our perspective...a narrow one, don't you think?

It wasn't a failed negotiation in my perception...it wasn't what you wanted, when you wanted it, in the way you wanted it. That's how I was...which is why this isn't me attacking you...I did this. Cut out a heckuvalot of love and cherishing from my own life because "I" was doing this...not my partner.

Now I don't...and life rocks. Are you thinking of reconciling? As Aph asked...are you married again? I saw you say you had two XH's. Are you considering reconciling with one of them? Good info for any relationship...with your family of origin, friends, coworkers...your choice of where you focus determines your life.

Choose well.

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

LA